Contemporary politics, local and international current affairs, science and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
Truth never damages a cause that is just ~ MAHATMA GANDHI

Saturday, 3 June 2017

Trump asked when the world will start laughing at the US. It already is

As he withdrew from the Paris climate deal, the president wondered:
‘At what point does America get demeaned?’ He’s already got that covered

‘They won’t dare laugh at an American president who takes a motorized
golf cart through the streets of Sicily.’ Donald Trump with other
leaders at the G7 summit in Taormina, May 2017.
Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

After a week of Donald Trump’s diplomacy, one thing is impressively
clear: the US is not Montenegro. It won’t get pushed around by some
bigger leader who wants to get ahead of the rest of the pack.

It won’t lead from behind when there are deals to be done, or undone,
and redone. If there’s an international agreement on trade, security or climate change
– especially one negotiated by a president not called Trump – then you
know that agreement is living on borrowed time. Much like the planet
itself.
No, the US is not Montenegro. It won’t accept a deal that involves
some kind of trade-off or negotiation. The US shouldn’t have to pay
billions for a climate change deal when it can pay trillions in sea
defenses for no climate change deal. That’s the kind of long-range
thinking you can expect from President Trump.
“At what point does America get demeaned?” he asked his rapt audience in the Rose Garden
on Thursday, as his unusually golden comb-over glinted in the afternoon
sun. “At what point do they start laughing at us as a country? … We
don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us any more.
And they won’t be. They won’t be.”
No they won’t. They won’t dare to laugh at an American president who takes a motorized golf cart through the streets of Sicily while his fellow leaders walk like pedestrians. They won’t laugh at a president whose handshake is a form of mortal combat
where only one hand survives with its dignity intact. They won’t laugh
at a president who thinks that saving the world is just another way to
destroy the US.Macron and Trump’s two tense handshake battles

Trump knows that this world is a zero sum game where the US is
losing if someone else is winning. Nothing is shared on land, sea or
air. Even the sea and the air themselves.
“This
agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries
gaining a financial advantage over the United States,” Trump explained.
“The rest of the world applauded when we signed the Paris agreement –
they went wild, they were so happy – for the simple reason that it put
our country, the United States of America, which we all love, at a very,
very big economic disadvantage.”
This is the kind of insight unique to business moguls and global
statesmen. Especially business moguls who become global statesmen. The
first sign that your deal sucks is when the rest of the world is happy
because human civilization might possibly be saved.
“A cynic would say the obvious reason for economic competitors and
their wish to see us remain in the agreement is so that we continue to
suffer this self-inflicted major economic wound,” said our totally
non-cynical president.

Nobody in the world knows more about self-inflicted major economic wounds than Donald Trump.
This is his specialist subject. Even China and Europe know how much he
has mastered this topic, as they prepare to dominate clean energy
science and technologies.
Granted, there is the special relationship to consider: those
ancient ties between Great Britain and the United States that mean the
Brits are the Olympic athletes of self-inflicted major economic wounds.
Perhaps that’s why Trump’s Rose Garden speech sounded so much like
Theresa May’s negotiating position on Brexit: that no deal is better
than a bad deal. “So we’re getting out,” Trump explained. “But we will
start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair.
And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine.”
As Samuel Johnson said about second marriages, this sounds like a
triumph of hope over experience. And Donald Trump knows a lot about
second marriages.
No, the US is not Montenegro. It won’t get its hand squeezed to
death by that annoyingly fresh-faced French president who keeps inviting
American scientists to move to France. Emmanuel Macron promised that he
would never turn his back on Americans, even if America was turning its
back on the world. This from a man who literally turned his back on Donald Trump.

France and Germany can lead Europe if they want. China can lead Asia
and Africa if it wants. But the US leads the world in seeing the Paris
accord for what it is: a last-ditch global effort to destroy Trump’s
coal-mining votes in West Virginia.
What
the world doesn’t realize is that Trump has torn up the Paris accord
because he loves the environment so much. Not because he loves it so
little. Trump carries an Amazon rainforest of concern about the climate:
that’s what makes him so very upset about Paris.
“Not only does this deal subject our citizens to harsh economic
restrictions, it fails to live up to our environmental ideals,” he
explained. “The United States, under the Trump administration, will
continue to be the cleanest and most environmentally friendly country on
Earth. We’ll be the cleanest. We’re going to have the cleanest air.
We’re going to have the cleanest water.”
See? This is good news, not fake news. Trump’s US will be the
cleanest and friendliest and most idealistic about the environment,
because Trump says he is “someone who cares deeply about the
environment”.
“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,”
Trump told the world. Never mind that the good folks of Pittsburgh are
citizens of the United States. Never mind that the Paris accord does
more than represent those fascinating old ladies of the 16th
arrondissement.
So get over it, Montenegro. Join the back of the line. And take the Chinese and the French and the Germans with you.

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About Me

I was inspired to start this when I discovered old editions of "The Worker". "The Worker" was first published in March 1890, it was the Journal of the Associated Workers of Queensland. It was a Political Newspaper for the Labour Movement. The first Editor was William "Billy" Lane who strongly supported the iconic Shearers' Strike in 1891. He planted the seed of New Unionism in Queensland with the motto “that men should organise for the good they can do and not the benefits they hope to obtain,” he also started a Socialist colony in Paraguay.
Because of the right-wing bias in some sections of the Australian media, I feel compelled to counter their negative and one-sided version of events.
The disgraceful conduct of the Murdoch owned Newspapers in the 2013 Federal Election towards the Labor Party shows how unrepresentative some of the Australian media has become.